India's Christians and Muslims cry foul over Hindu crusade for converts

By his count, Vyankatesh Abdeo has helped to convert 700,000 Indian Christians and Muslims to Hinduism in the past two decades. Yet he would describe it slightly differently.

"It is not conversion; it is reconversion," Abdeo, national secretary of the pro-Hindu organisation, Vishva Hindu Parishad, said. "A 1,000 years ago, all Muslims and Christians in India were Hindu. They were converted by the sword. We are just bringing them back."

Hindu fundamentalists, claiming that Christian missionaries and Muslim conquerors centuries ago converted Indians by force, have for years quietly sought to win them back. This year, seemingly invigorated by the rise of a right-wing Hindu government in New Delhi, they have held mass reconversion "camps", including some where people claim they were duped or threatened into changing faiths.

The effort has grabbed headlines and put pressure on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who once worked for the main Hindu nationalist organisation backing the conversion drive. Opposition lawmakers disrupted Parliament for two weeks demanding that Modi speak out on the issue, but so far he has remained quiet.

Modi's allies said his governing Bharatiya Janata Party did not condone conversions obtained by force or fraud, which are illegal in India. But his refusal to distance himself from the hardliners has led to critics accusing the party of pro-Hindu bias and added to a series of controversies that have overshadowed his efforts to jump-start India's economy since taking office in May.

"Prime Minister Narendra Modi's silence affects his credibility as a head of the nation loyal to the constitution," social scientist Shiv Visvanathan wrote in the Hindu, a secular newspaper.

The head of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) - the Hindu paramilitary organisation for which Modi worked for more than a decade before going into politics - has vowed to continue the conversions, which the group calls ghar wapsi, or homecoming. It is widely seen as the governing party's ideological parent, and several of its alumni hold posts in Modi's government.

The controversy pits people like Bhagwat, who believe India is a Hindu nation, against the secular values enshrined in the Indian Constitution. A 2001 census - the most recent figures available - shows 80.5 per cent of India's 1.3 billion people are Hindus. Muslims, who make up 13.4 per cent of the population, and Christians, who make up 2.3 per cent, are the largest religious minorities.

More than 200 Muslims were reportedly converted to Hinduism this month at a homecoming event in the city of Agra, organised by another RSS affiliate. Some of them later told Indian media they were misled and thought they were signing up to receive government ration cards.

Plans for a similar event on Christmas Day, targeting 5,000 Muslims and Christians in Aligarh, were called off after an outcry in the national media.

While Modi has focused on economic initiatives, his government has been distracted by disputes over religion. Hindu fundamentalists have spoken out against interfaith marriages, accusing Muslims of marrying Hindu girls to convert them to Islam in a practice dubbed "love jihad".

Analysts claimed the issue was created to stir up the Hindu vote before the national elections that brought Modi to power.